Description

“… a fun and rewarding ride!“ —Marc Kaplan, book reviewer for the New York Times

Ob-la-di Ob-la-da

by David Belmont

Ob-la-di Ob-la-da is filled with quirky character studies, personal narratives, unique & succinct insights, a world of music, and all the clever wordplay fans have come to expect from David Belmont’s writing.

Enjoy a video of David reading from his new book:

Early Praise:

These precious memories of love, life, and death have filled the deep, invisible chambers of David Belmont’s heart for so long. Now he shares them in one tender, tender verse of quiet cadence. A beautiful and haunting reading experience.

 —Nan K. Chase, author of Lost Restaurants of Asheville

David Belmont has written and assembled a montage of poetry and prose that achieves a remarkable result: a unique form of autobiography that reconstitutes the people, the times, and the music that shaped his special sensibility and interpretation of the world around him. It’s a fun and rewarding ride!

—Marc Kaplan, former magazine editor (Psychology Today, Omni, Penthouse) and book reviewer for the New York Times

Some poetry is wonderful because of acrobatic turns of craft or near rococo arrangements of melody. David Belmont’s new collection, Ob-la-di Ob-la-da is neither of those; instead it has an elegant simplicity, a much harder thing to pull off. David reveals a series of candid snapshots, capturing people and moments in unguarded honesty.

—Matt Hupert, founder of Neuronautic Institute, 2020 Acker award winner, author of secular pantheism

Part memoir, part wild ride, part choose-your-own-adventure, David’s poetry is always surprising. There are touching homages to his parents in their later years—David, noting his father’s refusal to use his walker while talkin’ synapses with a fancy mt sinai doc and his quasi-buddhist/nod when David comments that was what you were like as a teenager, right? Visiting his elderly mother who has late-stage dementia, they play the hat game as he hands her some of her favorite hats which she models with great panache. He takes us through his life on the 60’s and 70’s music scene, from seeing Bob Dylan at the Woody Guthrie Memorial Concert to watching some of the great jazz and blues artists at small now-defunct venues, to his career as a musician, composer and arranger. He takes us on a journey through a lifetime in radical/independent politics, sharing his love, indeed passion, for the mentors, leaders, everyday activists, and down-on-their-luck survivors alike. It’s a wild ride for sure, one you’ll not want to miss.

—Caroline Donnola, author of The Year That Was and host of the Poetry Lovers Virtual Salon

This is a wonderful book. In this striking collection of deeply touching poems, Belmont explores the people, places, and moments that are his poetic lifeblood.

Ob-la-di Ob-la-da introduces readers to family, friends, comrades, mentors, music idols and jazz innovators, each in their own way rebellious spirits; many who, whether due to their backgrounds, eccentricities, or just inborn iconoclasm, are outside the mainstream of American life, but who nevertheless form its vibrant undercurrent, one that animates this poet. There’s a tone of tough insistence in these poems. They revel in giving credit where credit is due.

Here is a physics teacher, “a quirky sacrilegious communist” who “turned us on to lord buckley/lenny bruce/tom lehrer/scotch”; here is anyuka, an old-world grandmother, “air travel fascinated her, but she thought the moon landing ridiculous/particularly the guy who played golf in a space suit”; here is a “solidly beatnik” diabetic weed dealer. We meet the poet as a youthful guitarist, enraptured, carried forward by the tidal wave of 60’s music, discovering his passion for revolution, and listening with unabashed awe while surrendering to the world-building magic of the Revolutionary Ensemble, “a singular musical monster at once devouring & transporting you”.

Part poetic memoir, Ob-la-di Ob-la-da includes love poems and elegies, prose poems and portraits, stretching over generations, neighborhoods, and communities. Belmont’s writing is, by turns, reverent, amused, philosophic, observant, and yet always intimate. He is a poet for whom remembering is an act of love, and we are grateful for his voice.  There is no summing up in these poems. They elegize not what’s been lost, rather they celebrate what’s been created. Life goes on, bra.

            —Nancy Green, freelance writer, co-founder of Castillo Theatre, NYC
with Jeff Aron, founding partner of Global Action 4 Mental Health and outreach coordinator of Global Play Brigade

About the Author

David Belmont is a mixed media artist and community organizer. He writes poetry, memoir and short fiction. World Gone Zoom: Notes from the American Epicenter, his debut poetry collection, was published by The Poetry Box in May 2021. Other writing has appeared in The Poeming Pigeon, Wildflower Muse and FishFood Magazine. David has been a professional musician for over 50 years, producing 26 albums of his own work. His CD WindWater Excursions spent 8 months on the New Age Voice Top 100 Airplay List (2000-2001)and was in heavy rotation on the syndicated radio program Echoes. He is vice president of Musicians for Musicians, a musicians’ rights organization based in NYC, and a member of the band SoSaLa (spoken word, dobro). David is on the faculty of the East Side Institute, an international center that promotes alternative and radically humanizing approaches to psychology, education and community building. He lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with visual artist Kim Svoboda and their labradoodle Penelope.

More info at https://davidbelmontwriter.wordpress.com